NEWSMAKERS.

`Out Of Sight' Is Tops In Film Critics' Mind

January 04, 1999|By Michael Wilmington.

NEW YORK — "Out of Sight," an adaptation of an Elmore Leonard crime novel, with Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney as opposites who attract, was voted Best Film of 1998 by the National Society of Film Critics, an elite, 51-member group of critics from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities.

Director Steven Soderbergh's entertaining genre film became an unexpected winner after several earlier ballots had favored runners-up "Saving Private Ryan" and "Affliction."

Soderbergh also was voted Best Director, followed by a tie between Steven Spielberg and Terrence Malick for the year's World War II epics, "Saving Private Ryan" and "The Thin Red Line.

The choice for Best Actor was Nick Nolte, who won on a first ballot for his performance as a New Hampshire man struggling with relentless pressures in the drama "Affliction." Best Actress went to Ally Sheedy, who played a photographer in "High Art."

In a very big year for British Queen Elizabeth I (Cate Blanchett was a runner-up for Best Actress in "Elizabeth"), Judi Dench won Best Supporting Actress for playing the queen in "Shakespeare in Love." In the Best Supporting Actor category, Bill Murray's "Rushmore" performance, as a crafty tycoon matching wits with a schoolboy, was cited.

The group, which met at the Algonquin Hotel on Sunday and whose chairman is Peter Rainer of New York magazine, selected the Iranian film "Taste of Cherry" by Abbas Kiarostami as Best Foreign Film.